Grappling Toward Emotional Engagement: Discussion of Andrew Eig’s “Self-Defeating Aggression and the Need for Rough-and-Tumble Play in an Adult Psychoanalysis”

Andrew Eig’s “Self-Defeating Aggression and the Need for Rough-and-Tumble Play in an Adult Psychoanalysis” brings to life therapeutic action in the noninterpretive, playful register. In this discussion, I highlight Eig’s creative use of self in dialogue, which serves to downregulate his patient’s protective defensives and overwhelming affect states, while also acknowledging the potential dangers in playful engagement, particularly around race, class, gender, and histories of disenfranchisement. In a spontaneous, embodied moment, Eig engages in movement before a session and accesses a reverie from his wrestling days, creatively discovering an imaginative and empathic link to his patient and their mutual desire for emotional contact. In doing so, he models a sensibility that invites the reader to consider their own personal idioms in adult treatment.